By Aisha Cole
Lagos – The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) says it will replace faulty scanners at the country’s borders and seaports by the end of the first quarter of 2017.
The Comptroller-General of the service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Monday.
Ali, who was speaking on the sidelines of the interception of 661 pump-action rifles by the service, said the replacement of the scanners was to enhance customs’ operations.
“Yes, we have problem of scanners, most of them are not working but we are working diligently to replace them.
“By God’s grace, by the end of this first quarter, we would have scanners fully installed in our ports.
“We are working on that. We know that the ones that we have had gone bad.
“Some of them, we have done a lot of scooping on them; few of them can be repaired and replaced and put back but we need to replace most of them with new ones and you know what it is.
“The paucity of funds has been part of our problem.
“We are working diligently to ensure that we get scanners into our own ports and the borders.”
It will be recalled that the Federal Operations Unit of the customs said on Monday that it intercepted a Mack truck along the Mile 2 Apapa Road carrying 49 boxes of pump-action rifles.
The manifest that followed the truck indicated that it carried steel doors, before the customs officials discovered otherwise.
The service said investigations were ongoing and that some suspects had been arrested
Ali, therefore, said the physical inspection of goods at the ports and borders before clearance would go a long way toward preventing security breach in the country.
He maintained that if the containers coming out of the ports had passed through proper physical examination, the officers of the service would have discovered the 661 pump action rifles that were seized.
He, therefore, enjoined customs officers to ensure that they carried out proper physical examination of containers at the ports before they are cleared.
